This week we have a conversation between one of the ultimate literary power couples: Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt.   

Paul Auster passed away in April of 2024. The New York Times obituary called him the “patron saint of literary Brooklyn.” He wrote screenplays, poetry, and nonfiction, but is probably best known as a novelist, and as an novelist his best known work is the New York Trilogy—City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room, all published in the mid-1980s–which he discusses in this conversation, along with his early career as a translator of poems from the French.   

Siri Hustvedt is a novelist and essayist; her essays include the collections A Pleas for Eros and the memoir The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves. Her novels include The Summer Without Men and The Blazing World.  In this conversation she talks about the book she was writing at the time, The Sorrows of an American.   

Auster and Hustvedt were married in 1982. They came to Portland in January of 2006 and interviewed each other. At times it feels as if you are eavesdropping on an especially intelligent dinner table conversation. Their respect for each other’s work is delightful to hear – and several of the questions they remark they’ve never asked the other! It’s a rare opportunity to listen in on two great minds in conversation. 

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024. 

Siri Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, three collections of essays, a work of non-fiction, and six novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Her most recent novel The Blazing World was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won The Los Angeles Book Prize for fiction. In 2012 she was awarded the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weil Cornell Medical College in New York. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages.